Hawaii’s largest and most prominent synagogue will elect new leaders Sunday in a vote that represents a referendum on its beleaguered rabbi and the fortunes — and future — of Temple Emanu-El.
The vote for board members follows a raucous meeting in May during which Temple Emanu-El members voted against retaining their 52-year-old rabbi, Peter Schaktman, by a disputed 141-138 vote that continues to generate controversy.
Even before the votes had been counted, police were called to the temple after a female member of the congregation was allegedly injured by a male temple member during a scuffle over someone videotaping the meeting.
Adding to the tensions engulfing Temple Emanu-El is a widely circulated email that includes a symbol of a swastika and references to Adolf Hitler from the mother of board presidential candidate Cliff Halevi, suggesting that her son’s detractors have been using Nazi-like propaganda tactics.
Amid all of the acrimony, Temple Emanu-El has lost an estimated 60 out of 230 families in just the last year.
If they — and their dues — don’t return, the temple likely won’t be able to afford to continue paying a full-time rabbi even if Schaktman hangs on to his job after his contract ends in June 2013 after serving for seven years as Temple Emanu-El’s sole rabbi.
"The temple is in debt because people have left and voted with their feet," said Alice Tucker, who has worshipped at Temple Emanu-El for 51 years, served as board president in the 1980s and is running for re-election as president Sunday.
Tucker, who supports Schaktman, had no lack of adjectives to describe the atmosphere at the temple, which she characterized as "awful," "terrible," "horrible," "tragic" and "painful."
"I want there to be a situation in the congregation that is conducive to feeling good about walking into Temple Emanu-El," Tucker said. "A lot of people don’t right now. It’s like we don’t have anything better to do than to fight ourselves."
The temple, on Pali Highway in Nuuanu, was dedicated in 1960 as the new synagogue for 75 families. In the decades that followed, Temple Emanu-El welcomed two Hawaii Supreme Court justices, three Hawaii attorneys general, former Gov. Linda Lingle, prominent business people such as the late Harry Weinberg and many attorneys, physicians and University of Hawaii professors.
Sunday’s vote during Temple Emanu-El’s annual meeting is usually a pro forma affair where a single slate of board officers is elected to lead the congregation.
Instead, temple members will have a choice between two competing slates led by two former board presidents: Halevi and Tucker, who was endorsed by the synagogue’s nominating committee.
Halevi did not respond to emailed questions from the Star-Advertiser.
Halevi instead wrote in an email that he did not want to comment until after Sunday’s election.
It "would be premature and therefore presumptuous of me to talk about my team’s vision and goals, and it would only engender divisiveness to address the unfortunate gossip that this competitive election seems to be eliciting, and I think it’s really important to try to calm the atmosphere, not inflame it," Halevi wrote.
Temple Emanu-El has a long and rich history of ousting its rabbis, which Tucker calls the temple’s ongoing "rabbi wars."
But nothing compares to the situation facing Schaktman, Tucker said.
"This is highly unusual and embarrassing," she said. "It’s an awful situation, just awful. Rabbi Schaktman is a competent, caring person. He has been raked over the coals."
Asked whether the tensions are related to his being gay and his support of same-sex marriages in Hawaii, Schaktman said, "No one has ever made an issue of that to me, even indirectly. I’m gay, and the people who hired me knew that I was gay. I didn’t announce it to the congregation, but it wasn’t a secret."
Later, Schaktman said, "There are different levels of homophobia, just like there are different levels of racism and other prejudices. There is a form of homophobia that says, ‘Here is someone who doesn’t look like me. He doesn’t have a family like I do. I look at him and I don’t see myself.’ That makes them perhaps less comfortable than they want to be, but they don’t recognize it as homophobia. I honestly think that if that’s true, it’s part of me being from the mainland, part of me being from the East Coast, part of me being single. It’s all part of what makes people not feel comfortable and not accept me as I am."
But Tucker has heard some temple members say behind Schaktman’s back that "‘He should go back to San Francisco and be with his kind.’ That’s nasty. It says we’ve got a big problem and it’s going to take decades for this to blow over. Every time there is a rabbi war, I can never feel as close to some people as I did before the rabbi war occurred."
Several current board members did not want to speak until after Sunday’s meeting or did not respond to requests for interviews.
Board President David Haymer, a professor at UH’s medical school, would not comment on why the board recommended not to retain Schaktman at the May 17 meeting.
In brief comments by telephone, Haymer said, "Really, this is an internal matter. … This is a religious institution and people get passionate. "
Passions often run hot at Temple Emanu-El.
Tucker presided over a board that got rid of its rabbi in the mid-1980s. By the early 1990s, Robert Fishman, executive assistant to Mayor Peter Carlisle, served as Temple Emanu-El’s president when the board went to arbitration over its rabbi.
"One thing that happens in Jewish congregations is there’s always disagreement," Fishman said. "Whenever you combine religious pursuits, spiritual pursuits, with a democratic process, you’re going to run into problems because they don’t parallel each other. It’s a test of leadership."
After he arrived from New York in 2005, the first four years of Schaktman’s tenure went smoothly.
Schaktman met every week with various board presidents, hashed out disagreements in private, then presented a unified front in public.
When new boards and new presidents were elected three years ago, the weekly meetings ended, and Schaktman said he faced an increasingly hostile board.
At one meeting a board member looked Schaktman in the eye and said, "We just don’t like you," Schaktman recalled.
"Something that’s very important to them, which is to be liked, is not as important to me," Schaktman said. "I’m not here to be liked. I’m here to be the rabbi. Even the people who most oppose me say I’m a good rabbi. They just don’t like me."
Tensions over the latest rabbi war boiled over during an hours-long congregational meeting in the temple’s sanctuary May 17.
Temple members originally were not allowed to discuss Schaktman’s fate before voting, which prompted protests that led to more acrimony.
"It was a cauldron of anxiety," Schaktman said. "People felt they had not been heard and their questions weren’t being answered. There was a lot of passion. I sat there throughout that whole meeting, and it was pretty awful. I did not think it was heading toward any useful purpose."
As Schaktman rose to speak, temple member Katie Friedman got into a confrontation with Halevi’s daughter, who was recording the meeting on her cellphone.
Friedman grabbed the phone, her hair was pulled and she was forced to the ground by a male member of the congregation, said Schaktman, who was a witness. Friedman was taken to a hospital with neck pain, and police were called.
The incident left her "emotionally fried," Friedman said. "It’s an awkward situation."
When the man who pulled Friedman’s hair denied any involvement to police, Schaktman said, another member of the congregation disputed the account and touched a female officer. That man was arrested for investigation of harassing a police officer, according to police.
After members ended up in handcuffs and hospitals, the vote ended up 141-138 to not renew Schaktman’s contract.
But temple members continue to argue about missing ballots, abstentions and whether temple bylaws ban — or allow — the kind of language that members voted on.
"This current board has not been the most effective of boards in the temple’s history," said current board member Hank Trapido-Rosenthal, who is running for re-election Sunday on the slate that includes Tucker. "It’s a tough congregation to lead and an even much tougher congregation to belong to."
The sudden departure of an estimated 60 families in the past year, Trapido-Rosenthal said, "has to do with the relatively poor relations between the current board and the rabbi. Most of them are waiting to see what will happen next. If we don’t rebuild the membership, the financial situation will make it difficult to hire and maintain staff."
While Sunday’s vote is seen as a referendum on Schaktman, he said, "even though it’s about me, it’s never been about me."
"The congregation, sadly, has a long history of difficult relationships with its rabbis," Schaktman said. "The congregation has never really done a serious act of introspection about why these things keep happening. Rarely does anyone say, ‘We erred,’ or ‘We made a mistake.’ The congregation doesn’t yet have an understanding of introspection."
If his contract is not renewed after June, Schaktman plans to spend the last 10 months of his time at Temple Emanu-El trying to heal the hurts of the last three years.
"I’m committed to this congregation, even in its troubles," Schaktman said. "I want them to learn something from this, even if it means I’m not here."
